Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [4]
I took another road, past the old sugar works and the water wheel that had not turned for years. I went to parts of Coulibri that I had not seen, where there was no road, no path, no track. And if the razor grass cut my legs and arms I would think ‘It’s better than people.’ Black ants or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants, rain that soaked me to the skin – once I saw a snake. All better than people.
Better. Better, better than people.
Watching the red and yellow flowers in the sun thinking of nothing, it was as if a door opened and I was somewhere else, something else. Not myself any longer.
I knew the time of day when though it is hot and blue and there are no clouds, the sky can have a very black look.
I was bridesmaid when my mother married Mr Mason in Spanish Town. Christophine curled my hair. I carried a bouquet and everything I wore was new – even my beautiful slippers. But their eyes slid away from my hating face. I had heard what all these smooth smiling people said about her when she was not listening and they did not guess I was. Hiding from them in the garden when they visited Coulibri, I listened.
‘A fantastic marriage and he will regret it. Why should a very wealthy man who could take his pick of all the girls in the West Indies, and many in England too probably?’ ‘Why probably?’ the other voice said. ‘Certainly.’ ‘Then why should he marry a widow without a penny to her name and Coulibri a wreck of a place? Emancipation troubles killed old Cosway? Nonsense – the estate was going downhill for years before that. He drank himself to death. Many’s the time when – well! And all those women! She never did anything to stop him – she encouraged him. Presents and smiles for the bastards every Christmas. Old customs? Some old customs are better dead and buried. Her new husband will have to spend a pretty penny before the house is fit to live in – leaks like a sieve. And what about the stables and the coach house dark as pitch, and the servants’ quarters and the six-foot snake I saw with my own eyes curled up on the privy seat last time I was there. Alarmed? I screamed. Then that horrible old man she harbours came along, double up with laughter. As for those two children – the boy an idiot kept out of sight and mind and the girl going the same way in my opinion – a lowering expression.’
‘Oh I agree,’ the other one said, ‘but Annette is such a pretty woman. And what a dancer. Reminds me of that song “light as cotton blossom on the something breeze”, or is it air? I forget.’
Yes, what a dancer – that night when they came home from their honeymoon in Trinidad and they danced on the glacis to no music. There was no need for music when his arm, down till her black hair touched the flagstones – still down, down. Then up again in a flash, laughing. She made it look so easy – as if anyone could do it, and he kissed her – a long kiss. I was there that time too but they had forgotten me and soon I wasn’t thinking of them. I was remembering that woman saying ‘Dance! He didn’t come to the West Indies to dance – he came to make money as they all do. Some of the big estates are going cheap, and one unfortunate’s loss is always a clever man’s gain. No, the whole thing is a mystery. It’s evidently useful to keep a Martinique obeah woman on the premises.’ She meant Christophine. She said it mockingly, not meaning it, but soon other people were saying it – and meaning it.
While the repairs were being done and they were in Trinidad, Pierre and I stayed with Aunt Cora in Spanish Town.
Mr Mason did not approve of Aunt Cora, an ex-slave-owner who had escaped misery, a flier in the face of Providence.
‘Why did she do nothing to help you?’
I told him that her husband was English and didn’t like us and he said, ‘Nonsense.’
‘It isn’t nonsense, they lived in England and he was angry if she wrote to us. He hated the West Indies. When he died not long ago she came home, before that what could she do? She wasn’t rich.’
‘That’s her story. I don’t believe it. A frivolous woman. In your mother’s place